Security codes (sometimes referred to as markers) are used to authenticate items. For example, bank notes typically include security markers such as watermarks, fluorescent inks, security threads, holograms, kinegrams, and such like. However, with advances in copying technology, it is becoming more difficult to provide security markers, which are not only difficult to counterfeit, but also easily and rapidly detected in situ, and inexpensive. Chemical and biochemical taggants are also used as security markers. However, in many cases such taggants must be removed from the item prior to being analyzed. This is both time-consuming and expensive and precludes use in certain applications.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a system and method for detecting, and identifying, e.g., validating, a security code that has unique spatial and spectral properties that make the code difficult to counterfeit, difficult to validate without a known validation code, and readily adapted to a large number of formats and different codes.